


and make a brand new start

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (I'M HONESTLY SORRY BUT I TRIED), (SORT OF I MEAN IT QUALIFIES AS ATHEISM), (also: the author one hundred percent failed at trying church porn), Alternate Universe - Actors, Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Alternate Universe - Hippies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - World War II, Arranged Marriage, Atheism, Bodyguard, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, HAVE SOME CRACK SHIPPING, Hippie communes, Huddling For Warmth, IDEK I'M PROBABLY MISSING HALF OF THE TAGS, M/M, Minor Lyanna Stark/Rhaegar Targaryen, Multi, Oral Sex, Painting, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Canon, Religious Discussion, Sharing a Bed, THERE'S FLUFF IN HERE SOMEWHERE, The Author Regrets Nothing, Threesome - M/M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Warging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-05 02:26:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17316320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: five times a bed was shared (in every sense of the word) in different alternate universe settings and one when it was shared in canon.





	1. ned/robert; 60s au (shakespeare actors)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TotemundTabu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TotemundTabu/gifts).



> .... HAHAHAHAHAH HELLO EVERYONE so: this is my pinch hit for robb-greyjoy/totemundtabu for this round of the asoiafrarepairs christmas exchange which AT THIS POINT ALSO DOUBLES FOR FIRST BIRTHDAY PRESENT THAT I WANTED TO DO sorry bro doing this meant I couldn't do *the other one* but it's coming asap is2g ;) <333
> 
> that said: I was 100% sure you'd guess it was me from the anon questions but I APPARENTLY NINJA-ED MY WAY THROUGH IT and I figured I'd try to keep it a surprise so: here you go, for once I didn't throw at you the endless WOULD YOU LIKE THIS THIS AND THAT list of questions so I just hope this is too your liking, also HEY LOOK AT ME I TRIED NEW SHIPS I just hope I don't suck at like, four out of six ;) ;) <3333 HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND HAPPY LATE HOLIDAYS sorry that you had to wait until now but hopefully this makes up for it ;)
> 
> also, as usual: the title is from a Queen song (NO ONE IS SURPRISED), I own absolutely shit, nothing belongs to me and **there are further warnings in the notes of each chapter when needed** so please heed them. ;) I'll leave this here and saunter back downwards now /o\

This play’s run, Ned decides as he stares at the crappy motel room in front of him, can’t end soon enough.

It _had_ sounded great when Jon came up to them and said that he had secured an American tour, and the deal itself was indeed sweet: twenty-five cities all over the US, three nights in each, a play performed each night, all expenses paid. Sure, it was all in college theaters, but Ned had figured it would do good to get out of Edinburgh, see the world and put together some more experience. They’re not a large company, but they all went through drama school together, and have performed together for a few years now, and they all have read about how the scene in the States is different, less old school, and performing in colleges sounded like a pretty sweet deal. On top of that, they also would get paid themselves, which isn’t a given.

So, they had picked three of their signature plays — _Henry IVth_ , both parts one and two, and _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ —, they had packed their bags after rehearsing for a month, and set sail for America.

Until they were on large cities on the East Coast, _everything_ went fine.

_Then_ they went inland.

And that wouldn’t have been technically a problem if Robert hadn’t decided that it was the right time to finally inform Ned’s sister of how long he had been wanting to ask her out just before their _Henry IVth, part two_ performance in Bloomington, except that before he could he found her backstage making out with Rhaegar Targaryen and for some miracle _they_ didn’t see him, given how engrossed they were in making out. (Or so Ned was told.)

Admittedly, it had resulted in a heartbreaking _my king, my Jove, I speak to thee, my heart_ , on Robert’s side (given that _Rhaegar_ plays Prince Hal, it had only made things worse), which had resulted in the students greatly enjoying their performance, but that’s the only good thing about it. Because on top of everything else, the motel they had booked for three days was _overbooked_ for second and third night, so they were moved to another one where they understood the number of people wrong, which means that they have half of the rooms they had asked for and that _he_ has to share with Robert.

Now, Ned has shared rooms with Robert since they were fourteen or so, in between school trips, going on vacation at their respective grandfathers’s in the summer and so on. _That_ wouldn’t be a problem. The problem is that they got the room with _one_ queen-sized bed, that Robert has accepted drinks from _every_ single student who wanted to buy him one because his acting was _fantastic_ , and that Rhaegar and Lyanna are next door. And now they have another _fourteen_ cities left before they get to San Francisco, which means that it’s _forty-five_ more performances, and —

Fuck, he _honestly_ hopes Robert gets over his sister before they reach Salt Lake City, or this is not going to end too well.

He shakes his head, hoping that the next city has a better motel offer.

“Well, here we are,” he says. “Robert, come on, let’s just get our things in.”

“Yeah, yeah, coming,” Robert mutters from behind him, good thing that he can hold his alcohol or he’d be completely wasted right now. Ned throws his bags in the nearest corner and lets Robert have the shower — maybe it’ll sober him up and maybe it won’t, but it won’t hurt any. He hangs up their coats and gets both their sets of night clothes ready for when Robert’s done, his light dinner sitting heavy on his stomach like lead when it has no business to, and he’s not surprised when five minutes later he hears soft moans coming from the other side of the wall.

Right. He’s _definitely_ telling Jon Arryn that next time if he and Robert bunk together it has to be very, _very_ far from both Lyanna and Rhaegar — honestly, he loves his sister but he’s not really looking forward to hearing her and Rhaegar fuck for half of the night. He shudders and doesn’t even try to say a thing when Robert comes out of the bathroom with the same face he had sported on stage the moment Rhaegar said _I know thee not, old man_.

“I’ll come out in a moment,” he says, running into the shower and trying to get sweat washed off as quickly as possible. Five minutes later he’s out of it — he takes another five to dry his hair at least some, put on his pjs ( _everyone_ in this company makes fun of him because he’s the only one who actually _wears pjs to bed_ rather than just underwear, a t-shirt and so on, but he likes wearing the proper attire, all right?) and try to come up with _something_ that won’t sound completely stupid.

He succeeds at the first two and not at the last one, so he shakes his head, puts his damp hair in a ponytail and gets out of the room. Robert has changed into his usual old fleece trousers that he always puts on to sleep and of course he’s shirtless. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Robert sleep with a shirt on in his entire life, and he tries to not blush at the sight — listen, he knows Robert’s _really_ into women and when he figured out that he _kind_ of found his best friend hot when they had known each other for some five years he had just shrugged and resigned himself to never talk about it with anyone, there was no point, but a man still has eyes. He allows himself a few seconds to stare at Robert’s chest, at his tan skin with a trail of black hair covering his entire chest — he can see the muscles underneath, same as he can see the trousers hug softly the soft flesh around Robert’s middle, which Ned actually _does_ like to look at, quite some. He just wishes that it didn’t look slightly larger than usual because Robert drank _that much_ beer over his sister’s preferences in men.

Then he hears his sister moaning. Very loudly. He doesn’t even try to not cringe — at least Robert is cringing way harder than Ned is.

“I’m sorry,” he says, sitting down next to him.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” Ned says again. “I mean, I knew you wanted to ask her out, and now — if you want I can ask them to keep it down.”

“Ned,” Robert says, smiling slightly even if his eyes are red, “while you’ve always been nice to a fault and I can appreciate that you’d offer… _What is_

_honor? a word. What is in that word honor? What is that honor? air._ ”

“Was that a _no_?”

“I don’t think you’re looking forward to knocking on that door and have your sister answer while she’s half-naked. Or _Rhaegar_ answer while he’s half-naked.”

Fair enough — _Rhaegar_ is not the man that Ned would like to see naked at any point in his life. Maybe Jon Connington _does_ , but certainly he has different tastes.

“Okay, no,” Ned admits. “Still, it’s hardly ideal. And better me than you.”

“Probably,” Robert concedes, and Ned will never _not_ be in awe of how well he holds his drinks. But then he shakes his head and sends his way a sad, _sad_ smile. “ _He hath a tear for pity, and a hand open as day, for melting charity_ , obviously.”

“Wait, are you quoting my own lines back at me?” Ned asks.

“Well, that’s _you_. I’ll have to give it to Jon Arryn, he picked the perfect part for everyone.” He shrugs. “I just hope it’s not an omen.”

With that, he moves under the covers, giving Ned his back.

Ned turns off the light and doesn’t feel like going to sleep at all.

A moment later, the bed in the other room creaks as the soft moaning starts again. Robert flinches and it’s strong enough that Ned can feel it, even if the bed is fairly large.

“What do you mean with, _I hope it’s not an omen_?” Ned finally asks after the silence threatens to become _too much_ , resting his back against the bed’s headboard. It’s uncomfortable as _hell_.

“Well, given _who_ I’m playing, it’s not looking too well.”

Now, usually, if any of the two of them happens to have self-pity moments, it’s usually _Ned_. And hearing Robert openly admit that he’s worried he’ll share poor Sir John Falstaff’s ending is more than mildly worrying, and fuck, Ned never was the kind of person who got by with words rather than deeds, but he can literally feel the atmosphere growing tenser and Robert’s eyes turn sadder, and he has to do _something_.

“Come on,” he says, tentatively putting a hand on Robert’s naked shoulder. “You’re being too dramatic.”

“Ned, we’re _actors_ ,” Robert snorts, and fine, right, fair point. _Still_. “Allow me at least _that_.”

“I’m _not_ dramatic.”

“Oh, you can be,” Robert protests. “Even if right now you aren’t.”

“You know, she’s not — I mean, I’m sad it didn’t go over well with Lyanna, but there are plenty of women into the world who I’m sure would rather have you over Rhaegar Targaryen.”

“What,” Robert laughs, “you’re renouncing the chance of having me as your rightful brother in law that easily?”

Well, at least it was a _joke_. “I never said I wouldn’t have wanted it,” he replies, “but honestly, I wouldn’t want to be with someone who — fancies someone else, you know?”

“That’s fair enough,” Robert says. “It’s just — never mind. It’s stupid and I’m halfway drunk, we should just sleep on it.”

“Robert, honestly, just say it. It’s weighing on you and usually if you quote plays while drunk, it’s not the _sad_ ones.”

Robert shakes his head, sits up and looks straight at him. The bed on the other side creaks and his sister _definitely_ says Rhaegar’s name. Ned grimaces. Robert laughs, slightly, and then takes a breath. “I mean,” he says, “I’ve thought about it all night. And — fine, I’m — until I found them with their tongues stuck into each others’s mouths, I hadn’t realized, but — maybe I was _so_ bent on asking your sister out more because of other reasons than because I liked _her_ that much.”

“… Other reasons?”

“You know, friends can fall out of touch, can’t they?”

“And what does that have to do with my sister?”

“… Oh, fuck’s sake,” Robert says, and a moment later he’s sat up and put a hand behind Ned’s head and —

It’s a way gentler kiss than Ned would have imagined, from Robert. It’s also _drunken_ and Robert definitely tastes like cheap American wine, but he’s doing it like he _means_ it and that’s what makes Ned return it, figuring that if it’s just for this once at least he’ll have had it, right…?

Then he leans back and sees that Robert looks genuinely happy about it, and if they were both sober maybe Ned would press the issue, but Robert is not and this was already too much.

“You know what,” Ned says, “we need to sleep on this.”

“Ned —”

“Robert, you can hold your alcohol but you’ve drank half of that bar and this is not how we should have this conversation. We’re talking in the morning.”

“Yeah. Fine, you’re — right, as always, honestly, but if you’d rather sleep on the sofa I —”

“Robert, I _never_ said I wanted to sleep on the sofa. Let’s just… sleep, period. And if tomorrow you want to make sure they hear us we’ll see to it, but —”

“Ned, did you just _suggest_ to do something quite foul while —”

“Robert, _nothing can seem foul to those that win_. And my sister _knows_ I kind of have fancied you for years, now can you _shut up_ and wait until we’re both sober and they’re done trying to break the bed?”

For a moment, Robert says nothing. Then his arm goes around Ned’s waist as he presses closer.

“You’ve got a deal,” he mutters, and then he’s out moments later.

Of course he is.

Ned smiles to himself, moves a hand to the back of Robert’s head, his fingers tangling in soft, black hair, and decides that he’s really, really looking forward to having that talk, next morning.

He definitely is.

 

End.


	2. asha/jeyne poole; modern au, artist & model

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one has VERY minor robb/theon plus veeery vague hints at ramsay being ramsay but VERY VAGUE. also my skills at f/f are what they are but I KNOW YOU LOVE THIS SHIP SO I TRIED <3

She can’t stop staring at the damned waitress.

Asha is entirely aware that she might come off looking like a creep here, which she’s really, _really_ would rather avoid. But she’s been sitting here for two hours staring at the empty sketchbook on the table, she’s at her second coffee and she’s only asked for a refill _and_ the cheesecake to have an excuse to talk to _her_ , name tag Jeyne P., and fuck, _fuck_ , she’s just glad Theon’s not here or he’d have made fun of her for the next ten years.

It’s probably her karma for all the time she made fun of _him_ and his ridiculous crush on Robb Stark. Most likely.

She doodles a few nonsensical shapes in the upper corner of the sketchbook, then looks at the counter again.

Average height, lovely chestnut hair, warm brown eyes, a pretty pair of legs under her red uniform. Sure, her nose has a bad scar on the side that she has definitely tried to hide with concealer, but Asha never was the kind of person turned off by scars, and actually… well. Professionally, it makes for an _interesting_ face, to say the least. But it’s not that she only has an _interesting face_. It’s that she seems to be genuinely happy to be there even if she’s been here since Asha came in at four PM and it’s six now. She probably has the afternoon shift.

Admittedly, Asha could walk up to her and ask her out — she always was a fairly direct person in that sense. But somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate to do it now and _here_ — what kind of asshole asks someone out at their place of work without even knowing them? She’s never been _that_ person — being direct is always good, but for bars, not for coffee shops. And if she wants to not get banned from this place forever, she should _not_ pass as the kind of person who harasses the staff — considering that the shop is new, that it’s just around the corner from her house, that the coffee is delicious and the cheesecake was also pretty good, she doesn’t feel like getting banned.

And _yet_.

She should be working on this advertising project she has signed on to with a local wine producer, but she’s not feeling it. It’s most likely because advertising pays the bills, but she’s had a lot of them to worry about in the last few months, which means she hasn’t drawn or painted anything that wasn’t for advertising or a commissioned piece in half a year, and she’s at the point where she’s going to go crazy if she doesn’t take a break for while. She technically _could_ — this project’s deadline is a month from now and it’s nothing too complicated. On the other side, only working on commissioned stuff has made sure to make her inspiration dry up the way fresh fruit does in the desert, which… hasn’t really helped at all.

She shakes her head, sips at her coffee, tries to _at least_ sketch the very rough basis of the only piece she has a shred of an idea for — the bottle of wine should be on a table in the middle of a porch covered in vines. It could go worse, she decides twenty minutes later as she switches to a red pen to draw the grapes.

She looks up at the counter again. _Jeyne P._ is swiping cards as the next customer pays, her hair carefully braided. Asha wonders for a moment how she would look with that hair let down. It would frame that round, lovely face, with those chestnut doe eyes, that pink heart-shaped mouth and the straight nose, and _yes,_ also that red scar covering half of it. Asha thinks, _could I draw it, with charcoal maybe_? That would make for a good contrast, especially if she drew the scar as well. Maybe she could color it with red oil —

Fuck. _Fuck_ , she thinks, _I said I wasn’t going to come off like a creep, and here I am staring at her and wondering how I could paint her_. Maybe _that_ isn’t automatically creepy, she decides, especially if she doesn’t act on it. She shakes her head, goes back sketching the vines. By the time she’s gone through a blue pen as well and decided at least where the bottle and the brand should go, she’s left with the bottom half almost empty. She should fill that up, probably. Maybe an animal? Could work — it’s wine, but they said they wanted it to be _wholesome_.

“Can I get you more coffee?”

Asha _almost_ draws a line straight through the empty part of the sketch before meeting _Jeyne P._ ’s pretty chestnut eyes. “Maybe a tea,” she answers. “Thank you.”

“Coming right up,” Jeyne beams, and dashes off to the counter. She comes back with hot water and a nice choice of teas in a small box — Asha chooses one as Jeyne fixes it inside the teapot. “There you go. If you need anything to eat, I’ll be there.”

“Thanks. I might, since this place has been good for _inspiration_.”

“Are you an artist? Sorry, I don’t want to pry, but — that’s really good.”

Asha smirks, hoping that it comes off as merely confident and not, well, bordering on manic. “No bother. Yes, I’m an artist. Well, right now I’m stuck drawing advertising, but you know, all of us have to pay the bills, don’t we? I’ll just try to finish this before I go back home.”

“Sounds cool. For what is it? If I can ask, of course. I mean, I know it might sound rude —”

“No problem. It’s a wine brand,” she shrugs. “They wanted it to be wholesome. I was thinking of putting a few dogs under there.”

“Nice,” Jeyne says. She doesn’t sound _too_ convinced.

“Any suggestion?”

“Dogs are nice, but — well. It’s a vineyard, and it’s a bit art nouveau, right? Maybe cats would fit in better? You could have the tails merge with the vines.”

“… You know what,” Asha concedes, “cats would be a better idea, right. Well, thanks for the input.”

“Oh, thanks for actually not assuming I was a creep,” Jeyne breathes, sounding excited that she had a good suggestion, and then runs off to the counter again.

_She_ was worrying of coming off like a creep?

Asha wants to laugh. Instead, she starts sketching the cats. Some five or six of them should be enough to fill all that space.

——

She gives up on it around seven PM — her basic sketch is done, more or less. Now she just has to re-do it properly on her tablet and color it, and then she has another _four_ posters to go. She shakes her head, standing up and pocketing the sketchbook before heading for the check out. She has to pay for her food, and she’s fairly sure that they’re about to close.

“Hey,” she tells Jeyne as she walks up to the counter. “I’m good. How much do I owe you?”

Jeyne rings her purchases, then gives her the total. Asha nods as she looks for her credit card and hands it over.

“So, did you finish that poster?”

“Sort of,” Asha says. “Nothing great, but again. You’ve got to pay the bills. I miss painting, but what can I do.”

“Well, good luck on finishing your work so you can try soon,” Jeyne grins, and thing is: she means it. Asha is pretty good at reading people. She _knows_ that she means it.

Fuck.

Well, at least she knows where she’s getting coffee tomorrow.

——

Somehow, it’s good for her inspiration — a week of coming downstairs instead of staring at her computer screen in her living room, and she has three posters on five fully sketched. She had planned on doing five posters in five different styles, and Jeyne has given her a few suggestions for the pop art one as well, and she’s hated drawing those damned things slightly less.

She _does_ tell Jeyne that this place has been good for her bills the fifth time she’s there -- it’s a slow day, and they started talking when Jeyne brought her the second tea of the afternoon.

“Well, good to know. Maybe we could use it for advertising,” she says, sounding delighted. “But really, it’s a pity you don’t get to draw for yourself.”

She shrugs. “Eh, it’s been a hard time. Inspiration is what it is. I mean, in the last couple of years my brother had a bad run-in with a creepy ex, my parents divorced and I had to help out my mother with the bills, so — it hasn’t been the best time.

“Sorry to hear it,” Jeyne asks. “But who knows, maybe one day it’ll come back.”

She sounds like she _means_ it, and it’s not helping Asha get over the queasy but pleasant feeling in her stomach. At all.

Asha drinks a bit of her coffee.

Then she figures that _maybe_ she can just go for it.

“And what if I had a proposition for you?”

“What — for _me_?”

“Listen, just — this is going to sound wrong regardless of how I spin it, but — I think you have an interesting face. I mean, I’ve kind of wanted to paint you for a bit. Would you consider posing for me? I would pay, of course.”

Jeyne stares at her for a long, long moment. “Wait, did you just ask me —”

“If you don’t feel comfortable feel free to say no, really, I understand that —”

“No, that’s not it,” Jeyne says. “It’s just, _really_?”

“… Why not?”

She gestures towards her nose. “ _That_ is really… not that great advertising. But even before — I mean, I’m okay, but no one ever told me I was _posing_ material.”

Asha has a _lot_ to say about that, honestly, but that’s not the point right now. “Well, there’s always a first time. And some of us aren’t into the Cersei Lannister type.”

Jeyne snorts, most likely conjuring up the image. She definitely does _not_ look like the person starring in the

“You know what,” she says, “I’m off-shift in two hours. I just might.”

“Oh — great,” Asha replies, trying to not sound like some kind of love-struck twelve-year old when she _never_ sounded like that even when she _actually_ was twelve. “I’ll be here trying to finish this one poster, I swear it won’t take me too much.”

“It’s not as if I had anything planned for tonight,” Jeyne says, her cheeks slightly pink, and then she stands up and goes behind the counter as more people come inside the shop.

Asha looks down at her half-finished Van-Gogh-style-sketch. Suddenly she’s drawing a blank on whether her living room is in acceptable conditions — she _thinks_ she cleaned up this morning, or yesterday afternoon, but she couldn’t swear on it, and — okay, she could go upstairs and check, but she did say she’d stay here until the end of the shift and honestly, she doesn’t want to look shady when she’s just invited Jeyne _in her house_ to _pose_.

Or maybe —

She grabs her phone, opens a text.

 

_Please go to my place and check if the living room is clean. If not — just clean it up, I’ll owe you_. She finds Theon’s number and sends it.

She doesn’t have an answer until an hour later, and she _honestly_ hopes Theon was just fucking with her or something because if he couldn’t go and waited this long to tell her —

_Good for you that I was out with Robb and we had nothing to do. Your living room was decent enough but you owe me for the dirty bra you left in the corner — will you ever stop sleeping on the sofa when you have a bed or what? Anyway, we also fed the cat and cleaned most of the fur around. You owe him too, actually_.

She lets out a relieved breath. _Fine, fine, you pick. I’m not going to protest_.

A minute later, her phone buzzes. _Whoever you’re inviting up, you really like them, don’t you_?

_Fuck you_ , she texts him. She doesn’t know what she’s going to owe him, but —

It’s worth it, all right?

——

As she opens the door, she spends a moment for feeling thankful that her brother turned out being a neat freak, most likely because _no one_ in the house was back in the day — he cleaned up _properly_ when she usually just throws away the trash, kicks the dirty clothes into the laundry machine and sweeps, but not more than once, and can’t ever be bothered to use a vacuum cleaner more than once per week. Theon put _wax_ on the floor, what even.

“Nice,” Jeyne says as she puts her bag on the sofa. “Somehow, I figured it would be messier. Oh, sorry, that was really _rude —_ ”

“Please,” Asha says, “I’ve never met anyone in this field who was _tidy_. I clean up after I use the place, but I also haven’t really done anything here for months, so. Do you want a drink?”

“Nah,” she says, “after I’m done with my shift I really need to _not_ look at food or drinks for a few hours, but thank you. So, how do you want to do this?”

“Right, let me think,” she says, considering her options. She had wanted to sketch her with charcoal, but now that Jeyne actually accepted, she _kind_ of wants to do a proper painting — she hasn’t done it in a while and she _missed_ it.

Or maybe she could blend.

_Why not_ , she thinks. “Wait there,” she says, “I’ll go get my things.” She stands up, opens the wardrobe in the living room and takes out a fresh canvas and her charcoal set, then brings it over to the middle of the room. She’s wondering _how_ she wants this to go, but a moment later the cat jumps on the sofa next to Jeyne and about — settles on her legs.

Huh.

“How cute,” Jeyne says, her hands going to the black fur. “What’s the name?”

“Nyarlathotep,” Asha deadpans.

“… _What_?”

“He _is_ an ancestral beast,” Asha shrugs. “I named it when I was fourteen and he was my mother’s, but she can’t keep him these days. That said, that’s not bad at all and if I know him he’s not going to move for a while. You mind?”

“What, sitting here cuddling a cute cat for a few hours? Easiest job I’ve ever had,” she grins, and _fuck_ , Asha really loves how how her lips curl up in that easy, soft smile.

“Good then,” Asha says. “Please just be comfortable, you don’t have to stay still as long as you don’t move around too much.”

“Got it. Aw, he’s so cute.” Her hands go to the cat’s fur and Asha immediately starts sketching — she always preferred doing it directly on the canvas and if she got anything wrong she could fix it later, but honestly, given how long it’s been since she’s painted anything, she just wants to get it out. It doesn’t have to be perfect. She sketches Jeyne’s chest and arms, then works on the cat’s shape, then finally moves on to Jeyne’s face — she sketches chin, eyes, nose and hair, shading it with her fingers.

“How is it going?” Jeyne asks as her fingers run behind the cat’s ears.

“Oh, better than anything else has for a while, I think,” Asha says, her fingertip smudging some charcoal around the cat’s tail. “Thanks for doing this, by the way.”

“No need to thank _me_ ,” Jeyne says, and when Asha glances up, she notices that her cheeks turned slightly redder. “I mean, again, _this_ didn’t really help.” She gestures at her nose.

“Please,” Asha says, “there was this guy I sketched once for like six months, he needed the money and I had an assignment for class, a series of twelve different portraits, all with a different technique. He had half of his face completely burned off.”

“ _What_?”

“Long story that I can’t share without authorization, but let’s say that he had your same reservations, and I always hated drawing _perfect-looking_ people. He didn’t believe me either, but I can be convincing.”

“How did that end?”

“Oh, I passed with flying marks and it was exposed at my school for a year. I think some of those paintings are still up. So, that? Really nothing that would stop me.”

Jeyne nods, her other hand scratching under the cat’s neck. The beast purrs, of course he does.

She works on the shading under the cat for a moment, then goes back to Jeyne’s hair. They talk shop for a while as Asha shades — she finds out Jeyne’s favorite color is purple, that she doesn’t get her best friend’s fascination with Ed Sheeran and that she’s studying to be a social worker but is earning some money on the side with the waiting job.

Then she puts away the charcoals and opens the oils, figuring that she can at least do the basis with the colors and then finish it up in the next few days. “You know,” Jeyne tells her as she dips the brush into the paint, “most people ask how that happened.”

Asha thinks about how Theon would hate being asked why two fingers in his left hand are bent wrong.

“I might be direct,” she says, “but I’m not rude and I’m not an asshole.” She puts some red on the side of her nose, then takes back the charcoal and mixes it with the oil while it’s still wet. When she glances up at Jeyne, she looks — pleasantly surprised.

She also doesn’t tell her how she got the scar, but it’s fine, she means what she says. She grabs another brush, dips it in brown and goes to work on the hair and eyes as Jeyne leans back into her sofa. Asha knows Jeyne is looking at her, she _absolutely_ does, she can feel it, but it’s fine — she’s done the exact same thing for the entire last week, hasn’t she? She doesn’t bother with the background — it’s been two hours by now and it’s dark outside, she can finish it later.

“Okay,” she says, putting the brushes away. “I can finish it tomorrow if you want to go home.”

“Oh — right, I lost the track of time. Well, I have the morning shift tomorrow, so maybe I should, but — can I see?”

Asha turns it towards her as she cleans her hands on a rag so that at least she gets rid of the leftover oil on her hands — she’ll wash off the charcoal and the rest later. “I’ll need to finish the back tomorrow, but it doesn’t look bad, I think.”

Jeyne’s mouth falls open. “Are you _serious_? This is gorgeous! I mean, it’s _unfinished_ and it already looks amazing, I can’t believe that’s actually _me_ in that —”

“Oh, it’s totally you,” Asha grins, “I never was that great at abstract stuff.” She winks at her, throwing away the rag on a chair. “For that matter, I could paint another five, at least.”

“… Seriously?”

“Told you,” Asha grins, “I only paint people I like.”

Jeyne’s throat works up and down, and Asha sees that her hands are clutching at her bag. “Everything all right?” She asks. “I hope that didn’t sound —”

“Actually,” Jeyne says, slowly, “what if I was _hoping_ it would sound… like that?”

Asha’s hands go still. “You mean, I was hoping that I was coming on to you?”

“What if I was?”

Asha shrugs. “I guess my game is still fairly strong,” she replies, “but like, this wasn’t an excuse. I mean, I _like_ you, but I wouldn’t have asked you to come up if I didn’t want to paint you for real.”

“And you said you could do it again?” Jeyne asks, taking a step closer.

“Hell, absolutely. I could do it again now, for that matter.”

She doesn’t gasp when Jeyne’s fingers tentatively grasp hers just because she has a _lot_ of self-control.

“And what if I’m down with it?”

Well, there’s a limit to self-control, Asha decides, and a moment later she’s grabbed Jeyne’s face in her hands and kissed her, and Jeyne opens her lips under Asha’s, kissing her back as if she had just been waiting for it, moaning a little into Asha’s mouth, and fuck, _fuck,_ it feels exactly as good as Asha had figured, and her skin is soft and smooth under Asha’s rough fingers, and —

_Then_ she realizes that she’s most likely stained Jeyne’s cheeks in charcoal, and she apologizes for it, but Jeyne just shakes her head and a moment later her own hands are in Asha’s short hair, dragging her head downwards.

Right.

_Right_.

Asha really, _really_ is looking forward to a series of oil and charcoal paintings. Maybe a few watercolors, too, and she should probably tell Jeyne that…

But she’s going to do that _later_.


	3. tyrion/bronn; modern au, bodyguards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... this is like, 100% mindless porn but man I wanted to write you some damned Tyrion porn and I was looking for a decent AU with a ship that could fit and THIS HAPPENED. HAVE FUN.

_This_ , Tyrion thinks as the bed dips and he frantically undoes the buttons on his shirt, _is probably not what my bloody father was thinking when he decided we all needed bodyguards_.

“Hey,” Bronn says as he undoes his tie, a knee going to the mattress’s edge, “ _I_ could have done that.”

“Yeah, and the tailor would tell my father that I went back to get it repaired. And he’d ask because he can’t mind his own business, so… I’d rather not rip this off, thank you very much.”

“Oh, so you _knew_ I would have ripped it off? How sweet.”

Tyrion was about to reply, _fuck you very much_.

Then he realizes that right _now_ , it would be a fairly bad pun, and he’s built a profession on _good_ puns.

“Maybe after three months I think I know how you tick,” Tyrion quips back, even if his voice doesn’t sound as sure as usual.

“Hm, don’t you?” Bronn shakes his head, throwing the tie to the side and uncovering a piece of exposed skin as he unbuttons his own shirt. Slowly.

Fuck.

They really are about to fuck, aren’t they.

Rewind: Tyrion _never_ asked for a bodyguard. Honestly, he hadn’t even asked for contact with his father after he left he published his first novel, it turned out to be a hit and left the family home, and he had enjoyed every second of it. Except that then his father finally got what he always strived for all his sad, passionless life (except for politics, of course), and got elected PM, and _suddenly_ he gets government agents on the door telling him that as _immediate family of the Prime Minister_ he has to accept being guarded twenty-four/seven and move into a _safe house_ — as in, an apartment where he has no virtual privacy and his father could walk in at any time. Same as _all of his father’s relatives_.

He had tried to fight it. For about half an hour. Then he had remembered all the reasons why he left home the moment he had the means for it, and then he had resigned himself to four years without privacy any longer.

_Then_ he had met _his_ bodyguard.

“Tyrion Lannister?” Bronn had asked when they met.

“The one and only,” Tyrion had replies. “I imagine that you weren’t looking forward to this one job?”

He had figured he wouldn’t — Tyrion has a terrible tabloid reputation (because his father made sure of it), half of his readership is people hoping to find detailed descriptions of orgies in his books because he’s on the _Sun_ ’s cover for similar happenstances every other week (he’s been in a few, admittedly, but back before he left home, and he gave up trying to prove it’s all bullshit), and he’s embraced his public-asshole-image at this point. Bronn had grinned and shook his head, extending his hand.

“Oh, all the contrary,” Bronn had said, “I loved your books, even if the last one was a bit on the self-pity side. Unless I guessed wrong and your avatar wasn’t the protagonist’s girlfriend, but it seemed like it. And why wouldn’t I look forward to it?”

“… Because according to the gossip press in this country I’m a horrible person _and_ on top of that _my father_ would pay you, so it’d mean working for _him_?” Tyrion had asked.

“Oh, _the government_ pays me. Who gives a fuck about your father’s opinion. Also, the only good use for the _Sun_ is as substitute toilet paper,” Bronn had said, and at that point Tyrion had thought, _maybe the next four years might not be so bad if he actually said those four words in the same sentence as mentioning my father_.

The next three months had actually gone great. Bronn isn’t invasive, he has Tyrion’s same sense of humor — which means that he never complains at Tyrion’s choice of evening movie —, he’s actually punched a few religious fundamentalist assholes who can’t deal with his books’s _explicit content_ outside the BBC studio where he was being interviewed, and he’s generally good company. Given that Tyrion hasn’t had that many close friends in his life, he had figured that he sort of counted. And if he happened to be the kind of guy that Tyrion always found easy on the eyes, well, even better — at least he could _look_. Not that he actually ever expected anything more than _looking_.

Then he had talked to Jaime and found out that _he_ was fucking his own bodyguard.

“Isn’t that, like, _unprofessional_?” Tyrion had asked Bronn, later.

“On _Brienne’s_ side, totally,” Bronn had said, “but I’ve talked to your brother. Totally her type. And it won’t be me telling anyone else about it. Will _you_?”

Tyrion, who remembers how long it took Jaime to get over his over-toxic relationship with Cersei (is she banging her own bodyguard? Tyrion has seen Osmund Kettleback once, and if she is, well, she has terrible taste) and shudders. Given that he sounded very happy about the current state of things, Tyrion isn’t going to do a thing to jeopardize it. “ _Hell no_ ,” he had said. “At least one of us is getting extra out of it.”

Bronn, who has been helping himself to Tyrion’s liquor cabinet, had raised an eyebrow. “What, _you_ want extra out of it?”

Tyrion had stared at him. “Are you being serious?”

Bronn had shrugged. “I said your brother was _Brienne_ ’s type and I asked _you_ if you wanted extra. Last I checked, you could put two and two together.”

Tyrion’s throat had gone dry at once as he let himself drift downward on the sofa, until they were sitting side to side. “I _can_ ,” he had said. “So are you implying that _you_ aren’t professional, as well?”

“Lannister, I think something should have been obvious from the get-go. _She_ is the professional one out of the two of us, I never was.”

Turned out: Bronn _can_ kiss, and at that point Tyrion had said that he paid for a good bed for a reason, and —

Yeah. Right. Now they’re in his bedroom and Bronn has just thrown away his shirt and Tyrion’s eyes are moving over his naked chest — all toned and muscular, _of course_ , and Tyrion’s been up close to the man enough times in the last three months to know that as _unprofessional_ as he is he takes this job very, very seriously, and sure as hell he works out.

And he apparently wants to —

Right. _Right_.

Listen, Tyrion’s list of issues is long enough that his therapist most likely will pay out his twenty-years mortgage just by helping him work through it, but _one_ thing he always knew is that he never was a lousy lay. Okay, fine, most people who knew that were paid, but it’s not his fault if in between people who know who he is, or who his father is, or so-called fans, everyone else he runs into seem to be gold diggers.

“So,” Bronn grins as he kicks off his shoes, “is your silk chemise safe now or do you need to fold it?”

“Hey,” Tyrion protests weakly as he throws it on the nearest chair, “my _silk chemise_ is handmade, let me indulge in _one_ of the family weaknesses.”

“What,” Bronn says, rolling on his stomach, “being unable to buy cheap clothing? I thought you also had the shitty sense of humor down.”

“That’s me and Jaime,” Tyrion protests weakly as Bronn’s hands go to his belt. “It’s not a _family trait_.”

“So you say.” Bronn throws the belt to the side, his rough hands sliding over Tyrion’s hips, and okay, _okay_ , they’re doing this, and fine, Tyrion hasn’t exactly been with anyone lately because it would just be weird to have the government-paid bodyguard stand outside the door while you fuck _whoever_ , but —

He supposes that if the bodyguard is _beyond the door with you_ , that changes, doesn’t it?

Then Bronn leans down and kisses him, _again_ , and as Tyrion reaches up and grabs his shoulders he can’t help moaning a little bit, feeling how firm those arms are, but then again _all_ of Bronn feels firm and warm under his palms right now, and as Bronn’s rough fingers cover his cheek as they kiss deeper, he decides that if he’s drunk-hallucinating the entire thing, he’s _entirely_ fine with it.

“I imagine,” Bronn groans when they part for air, “that you don’t have, you know —”

“No,” Tyrion says, “I mean, I _used_ to, in my own damned house, but do you think that I’d keep lube or condoms or _whatever_ in the bloody _safehouse_ my father’s renting, you’re out of your mind.”

“Fair,” Bronn says, “I sure as hell hope you convince him to let you move back to the old one, then.”

“Believe me, we’re working on it — _fuck_ ,” he groans as Bronn leans down and sucks down just where his neck meets his shoulder. “I’m _definitely_ working on it. And now can we _please_ avoid mentioning any of my relatives until we’re done?”

“Done deal,” Bronn grins, and then they’re kissing again — Tyrion groans into it and tries to find friction against Bronn’s leg given how hard he’s become by this point, and good thing that Bronn isn’t apparently the kind of guy who’s into making their partner suffer — he has a hand on it a moment later, and _shit_ , his fingers are rough and long and fast as they give him sure, quick strokes, and who cares if Tyrion _knows_ that the tips are rough and covered in callouses also because the man _can_ handle a gun? Sure as hell he thought it was hot when Bruce Willis did it in _Die Hard_ , and what if Tyrion’s type when it comes to men has always been… well, _well-built_ even if not too much and with noses who have obviously been broken more than once and not stereotypically pretty faces? Probably Bronn doesn’t do _typical_ looks when it comes to men either, but better for _him_ , Tyrion thinks, and he moans louder as Bronn’s rough, long fingers jerk him off as their lips meet again and _again_ , and fine, maybe it’s not refined and maybe he’s not going to last long, given how starved he was for good sex lately, but _who cares_. Sure as fuck no one’s put that much effort into making him come in the last year or so, and when Bronn moves back, grins and leans down and takes him in his mouth _just_ when he’s this close to coming, Tyrion almost rips off the sheets trying to hold back. He _does_ manage that, not for long but enough for Bronn to suck him off for more than a few, undignified seconds, and when it happens he almost arches off the bed, Bronn’s tongue running along the head of his cock, swallowing as he comes inside his mouth, _all of it_ , and there’s white-hot pleasure running through his veins as he says _yes_ and _please_ and _go on_ and _fuckfuckfuck_ all over, until he’s completely spent and he’s laying back agains the pillow… and his throat goes even drier as Bronn moves back and he sees the shadow of his beard sticky with come.

The fact that Bronn looks like someone who _absolutely_ enjoyed doing it is doing _nothing_ to make his blood stop boiling. “Lannister,” he grins, “sure as hell you’re the kind of guy who gives you professional satisfaction.”

“Oh,” Tyrion grins back, “ _professional_?” He eyes Bronn’s dick — the underwear was lost a long time ago, he thinks, and he’s still _hard_ , very much so, and for a moment Tyrion thinks, _when I was fourteen or so I’d have never bet a cent that someone might be hard like that for_ me _,_ except that right now it seems like Bronn _is_. “For your information, none of the people I ever was with thought I was a lousy lay, if I could convince them to give it a go.”

“Imagine that,” Bronn says, lying back on the bed, hands behind his neck, “you didn’t need to _convince_ me in the first place and we’ve got all night. We’ve got all month, for that matter, but I suppose we’ll need supplies at some point. You can absolutely show me how good of a lay you are.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Tyrion grins tentatively, moving in between his legs, “can’t wait, for that matter.” Then he leans down, a hand going to Bronn’s thigh, his mouth taking in the tip of his cock, and then he goes slow — he never was much for doing it fast and dirty, and Bronn’s already hard, no point in trying to choke on it. He swallows it piece by piece, his hands working on the shaft before he finally takes it in his mouth, one of them occasionally brushing against the man’s balls once in a while, feeling him harden in his mouth and curse all over — good. _Good_. By the time Tyrion has most of Bronn’s dick in his mouth and his free hand keeps on brushing against his balls once in a while just to keep him on edge, Bronn’s thrusting into his mouth and grabbing at his hair and cursing even louder, in ways that make it absolutely clear that he’s appreciating Tyrion’s skills at giving head to a guy.

Good, Tyrion decides as he speeds up his pace and sucks down harder, and _harder_.

He’s not moving until Bronn comes inside his mouth.

Then he can see if there’s some way to get inventive with the hand lotion in the bathroom — that’s probably not good enough for fucking properly, but a round with his hands? Might be good enough for it.

He grins slightly, as much as he can when his mouth is wrapped around someone’s dick and that someone is highly enjoying the way you run your tongue across the slit and up and down the shaft.

Oh, he’s _really_ glad he said he wanted _extra_. And if this is not what his fucking father thought would happen when forcing a bodyguard on _him_ , well, even better.


	4. jon/sam; world war two + monastery au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys **WARNINGS FOR THIS ONE** : the beginning idea in my brainstorming session with friend-who-helped was 'they're both monks', then I was like 'but we lose the military aspect', then stuff happened and THIS was the result. Also since my recipient does like church porn I... sort of tried and then I realized it wasn't gonna work because I'm shit at it and this happened instead (no porn, sorry!), but **we're both atheists and in this fic Sam is too even if he's the one who took the vows for reasons** so a lot of this is probably inherently blasphemous and not really respectful and I most likely didn't deal with the topic with the necessary attention, but it's apparently the best I can do with this subject so *shrug*. If that kinda thing bothers you or if you're religious and wouldn't like me to casually dismiss it **please I beg you skip this one** and move to the next chapter, thank you very much.

“ _Sam_? What are you even doing _here_?”

Sam — who surely hadn’t thought he’d run into his former roommate in Cambridge _here_ of all places, and who certainly hadn’t told Jon Snow that he had spent a good part of the time they roomed together having not-so-chaste fantasies about the two of them doing what was written in the parts of the _Symposium_ their teacher censored while reading (not knowing that Sam had learned Ancient Greek on his own, in his own library at home, so he _could_ read it), and who also hadn’t protested too much when his father pretty much forced him to join a Benedictine monastery in _France_ , not even in England, also because he had figured that if his father ever found out about how much he liked boys (and not just girls) it would end up horribly and being disowned wouldn’t have given him the Cambridge teaching post he had dared hoped he might apply for one day when enrolling — wishes he had a month to reply to that question in depth.

He doesn’t have it, though.

“I’ll explain later,” he says. “How many of you are here?”

“Four,” Jon says, wrapping himself in an old French army jacket.

“Right. The abbot won’t complain, it wouldn’t be the first time we do this and he hates the Germans as much as anyone else. Quick, get in. And then you have to explain me how you’re with the _French Resistance_ of all places.”

“Just after you explain me how I left you about to graduate and now you’ve taken bloody _vows_ ,” Jon quips back, and for a moment he feels like they’re back in their old room in Cambridge and feels like someone just stabbed him in the heart.

But it’s not the right time now.

Then Sam moves out of the way and lets him and the other four get inside the abbey, then locks the backdoor.

Time to bring them to the abbot’s office and see how he wants to hide them.

——

Later, in the warmth of his small cell, he finds out that Jon was studying in Paris when the war broke out and couldn’t find a way to get back to England, and when France was invaded he fled the city and joined one of the partisan groups, which took him in also because he could speak five different languages and was an excellent shot, and he’s been trying to blow up German trains ever since.

“Except that this last mission went all wrong,” Jon sighs. “It was twenty of us, now it’s four.”

“I’m — sorry to hear it,” Sam says, sincerely.

“Sure, and now can I finally hear _how_ you ended up here? Because honestly, I thought you wanted to study Latin, not become a _monk_.”

Sam breathes in, dropping on the bed that is big enough for him but certainly not two people and that they’ll have to share later, because while he’s willing to house partisans, he’s loathe to giving them single rooms, in case some random German platoon drops by and wants free beds and meals, too. He doubts they’ll be checked — it’s a small abbey and they have nothing of value in here, but still. “I told you that my father didn’t want me to _succeed him_ , right?”

“You did,” Jon shrugs. “What, the new Marquis Tarly can’t be Latin professors now?”

“No, but they can be officers in the army.”

“Like your brother?”

Sam nods. “He pretty much strong-armed me into doing it just after you left for Paris. And — well. Let’s just say I couldn’t say no. He made sure I got sent to France just to have me out of the way.”

Jon’s eyes look a darker shade of gray in the light of the fireplace. “I can imagine _how_ he’d make sure you wouldn’t say no,” he says. “So what, enjoying religious life now?”

“Please,” Sam says, “I mean, I don’t _hate_ it, there’s a library and they put me on duty there, and it’s better being _here_ than, well, outside. Sorry, I know it sounds horrible, but --”

“Sam, _please_ , you never were a fan of the military and you really don’t want to be out here bombing trains, freezing in the goddamned snow and hoping that the Americans wake up and do _something_ before the Germans get to England, too. No one blames you for not wanting to be outside.”

“You are, though.”

Jon smiles slightly, shaking his head. “Come on,” he says, “what was I going to do? Get arrested? British citizens don’t fare too well around here these days. And I got into Cambridge because of my excellent skills in languages, not because my family had a free ticket to it.”

“How are they doing, by the way?”

Jon shakes his head. “Last I heard, Robb is stationed somewhere in Africa. Probably it’s better there than _here_. Everyone else is out in the country and trying to get by hoping they don’t get bombed. That was six months ago, though, I don’t exactly have an address they can send information to.”

“Right,” Sam says. “I just hope they’re fine. _My_ relatives sure as hell will be.”

“What, the brother won’t get sent to combat?”

“If I know my father, he’ll get sent to a desk job,” Sam sighs. “But never mind _that_. I — I wasn’t really expecting to see you again, especially not like _this_ , but it’s honestly been the best thing that’s happened since I came here.”

“What,” Jon half-grins, “you haven’t found any old undiscovered text in the library?”

“Jon, I _really_ don’t think this is the library where you find the long-lost copy of the _Satyricon_.”

“Didn’t seem like it,” Jon agrees. “But it’s nice to see you, too. Even if sorry, but given your opinions on organized religion back in the day…”

“They haven’t really changed,” Sam shakes his head. He glances at the cross hung on the opposite side of the wall. “But what can I do. For _now_ , I’ll lie in this bed. After the war… I’ll see, I guess. How long will you stay here?”

Jon shakes his head, taking off his tattered jacket. “We were thinking a couple of days. It’s snowing outside and the Germans are on the lookout. When the weather gets better, probably. And I guess we should turn in, it’s late, but —”

“Of course,” Sam says. “If any of the others passes by they’re going to murder me if they hear me talk.”

“What, no speaking after nine in the evening?”

“Pretty much,” Sam says as Jon moves under the covers, pressed up against the wall. They barely fit in when he also slides under them, but if he doesn’t move too much, they probably won’t fall off it. “Honest, I miss arguing with you about Aristotle’s lack of merits until one in the morning more than I ever thought I would.”

“That’s because he’s _way_ superior to Plato and you can’t admit it,” Jon says, and Sam can hear that he’s smiling in the dark. “Fuck, honestly, I’d pay to argue about that instead of — well. Discussing which German train we should try to blow up this week.”

Sam can believe that. He _really_ can believe that. He puts an arm around Jon’s waist, trying to move closer — it’s still too cold — and Jon moves back against him.

“Shit,” he says, “how much weigh did you lose?”

Jon snorts, slowly turning on his side until they’re face to face. Fine, he blew his candle, so he can barely see Jon’s face in the moonlight, but that’s not the point — he remembers it by heart. He always liked how it was slightly long, with those beautiful grey eyes and thin lips and dark hair. And fine, Jon always came off as too serious to a lot of people, but when he smiled at you it felt like he was giving you some kind of gift because he didn’t do it for a lot of people, and — damn. It’s been years and Sam hasn’t really moved on, has he?

“Eh, I guess some, but it’s not like we eat that well. Actually I hope your abbot can give us decent food, because that’d be _really_ appreciated.”

“He will,” Sam says, a hand moving to the small of Jon’s back. “We’re not _that_ bad off. But — I’m sorry. You deserved way better.”

“It’s all right,” Jon replies. “I’m doing my share, I’m not dead, my family isn’t as far as I know, I just ran into the only tolerable person in Cambridge —”

“Oh, it’s _tolerable_ now?”

“Fine, the only person in Cambridge who wouldn’t look down on me because I didn’t come from money. I could do a lot worse.”

Sam laughs, for the first time since he understood he wasn’t going to even finish his degree before his father forced him to take his damned vows. “You know, I didn’t just miss discussing dumb philosophy at one in the morning. Or, well, _proper_ books. I missed you, too. I mean, you say the others looked down on you for the money, but they looked down on me for actually, like, _caring_ about what we studied, so.”

He breathes in as Jon’s hand wraps around his hip, bringing him closer. “Sam, for real, you were too good for both them and your father,” he sighs. “You know, I always thought you’d end up teaching Greek to the next generation of arses attending there and I’d translate your articles or _something_ like that.”

“Honestly? I’d have loved it,” Sam says before his traitorous mouth says something else like _even if I would have hated not being able to tell you that I’ve been in love with you since we started rooming for all that time_. “But hey, I mean, who says that couldn’t happen?”

“What, you’re going to renounce your vows? Can you even do that?”

“I think I can,” Sam shrugs. “I mean, I have a feeling the abbot knows perfectly I wasn’t cut for this life and wouldn’t even complain, he’s less bad than one could have thought. My father would hate it, but he pretty much disowned me, so what do I even have to lose?”

“Makes sense,” Jon agrees. “Well, I’ll try to stay alive just so I can translate your extremely boring articles on Plato’s superiority, how about that?”

“You should stay alive for _yourself_ , but I can live with that,” Sam says, and he’s really glad that it’s dark out, because Jon can’t see that he’s most likely blushing, and then —

Then he feels lips brush against his own, and _wait_ , what — when Jon moves away he immediately moves forward again, and then they’re kissing properly — Jon parts his lips for him at once, his tongue slowly finding Sam’s, and Sam holds him closer as he kisses him just a bit harder, just giving it some more pressure. His hands find Jon’s hair, tugging on it, and Jon moans into his mouth before holding him closer as well, and he doesn’t know how long it goes on but by the time they part he’s feeling like he’s out of breath and he can feel Jon grinning slightly against his mouth as their noses brush together.

“Wow,” Jon says, “I thought you’d kick me off the damned bed.”

“… Jon, I’ve been wanting to do that since… since the second week we were rooming together,” Sam admits into the dark, and he can feel Jon going still against him.

“ _That_ long?”

“Excuse me if it didn’t seem the right place to bring up that I _really_ liked you the way I’m supposed to like girls. I mean, I like girls, too, but —”

“Sam?” Jon whispers. “I’ve been wanting to do that since — maybe not _then_ but since we were in Cambridge, too, and if I only have three or four days here then I’m not interested in wasting them, and since it doesn’t seem to me that you care _that_ much for, well, our Lord watching us from the other side of the wall —”

“Jon, how many times did you help me skip mass because I _didn’t want to go_?”

“Right. Well, you never cared, you obviously still don’t, I never cared either, I think we can do this properly now, can’t we?”

Sam is waiting for it when Jon’s mouth meets his again, and again, and _again_.

He thinks that in four days he’ll have to open the back door for him again and watch him going off into the snow, and he thinks, _maybe I could just be brave for once and follow him, it’s not like they need me here_.

Maybe he will. _Maybe he will_.

For now, though, he’s more interested in the way Jon’s lips are moving against his and in the small moans Jon is making into his mouth and that he’s swallowing with all the greed that he always thought was his father’s suit more than his own, and nothing else matters.

And if Our Lord exists (doubtful) and really can see them from the other side of the wall, Sam honestly hopes he’s enjoying what he sees. If not, well, patience.

It’s not as if he’d give up a good thing he has in life right now for something he’s never even believed in.


	5. jon c./brynden/jaime (& combinations thereof), past jonc/r; 70s/hippie commune AU, CRACK OT3 OF DOOM

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... bro, I have no excuses for this, I wanted to put a chapter with a JonC ship and it happened. SORRY NOT SORRY I HOPE IT MAKES SENSE.
> 
> Also: this has references to past Jaime/Cersei which is *not* seen as healthy in any way whatsoever. I warned everyone. ;)

Fact is: Jon showed up in Riverrun one year ago out of total desperation.

Or better: he showed up in Riverrun because he realized that there was a limit to how miserable he could be in London, and everyone bar Oberyn and a few others had told him that he was completely insane for ditching everything and joining a bloody hippie commune in Ireland.

Riverrun is also the _only_ large enough community in the entirety of the British _and_ Irish isles that it actually ended up on the news. And thing is — the more Jon read about how the local religious fundamentalists wanted it _gone_ , the more he thought, _this place sounds actually great_. No judgment based on orientation, no need to come from one specific background, everyone has a job on the premises based on what they can do, they all pay taxes to the Irish state, of course, hard drugs aren’t permitted, it’s smack in the middle of some green area where you can only get with a car and fifty minutes of driving on a backroad — to someone who only came out to four people including the hopelessly straight guy he’s been in love with since he was a teenager and who is about to get married, who has felt stifled since his father died and had to take the reins of the family insurance business and who really, _really_ needs a change or ten, it sounded like a dream.

He thought about it for six months. When he realized he wasn’t going to change his mind, he applied to join and when he received a letter with a positive answers, he sold his share of the insurance business to his father’s partners, said goodbye to everyone, said he’d write letters and call, took a plane to Galway, rented a car and got there.

To this day, he hasn’t regretted it for a single moment — it’s a lot more laid back than _anywhere_ he’s ever been, no one bats an eyelid if people are in _foursomes_ , and he immediately found a place to work at because they couldn’t believe they actually were getting someone with insurance and baking experience because none of them ever was into economics much and really, working on the commune’s taxes is _way_ more relaxing than his previous job.

He hadn’t thought he’d actually _move on_ and get over Rhaegar, but he had thought that not having to hide being into guys would have been enough.

It _had_ been, until he had found himself frenching the place’s founder, Brynden Tully, who is definitely easygoing, has blue eyes of a warm, lovely shade, a few streaks of white in his hair and lines on his face that Jon really thinks he likes, and fine, they both had a couple of beers before, but it had feel nice to finally flirt with someone without thinking about Rhaegar’s purple eyes or silver-blonde hair, and after then they ended up in the same bed, and it happened again, and _again_ , and while not many people are _really_ monogamous here… well, Jon never was the kind of person who jumps from partner to partner, and Brynden wasn’t either, and so it’s been some six months since they kissed for the first time, and honestly? Best thing Jon’s ever done in his life. They took it slow, for obvious reasons, but he hasn’t felt lingering sadness every time he mails a letter to Rhaegar for a long time now, and man, hadn’t he missed a lot by only having sex once in a while with guys who looked _maybe_ a bit like Rhaegar and only made him feel more miserable. Now that he’s having it with someone who _doesn’t_ look like Rhaegar, is nothing like Rhaegar and doesn’t remind him of Rhaegar at all, it’s _nowhere_ near miserable.

All the contrary, actually.

——

So: everything goes great.

And it keeps on going great until Jaime Lannister applies to join and Brynden accepts it after a couple of weeks — more than it usually takes.

After, he tells Jon that he had doubts because Lannister is hardly a _low-profile_ figure and surely his father, who is a key figure in the Tories, wouldn’t take it too well if he joined _an Irish hippie commune_.

“So why did you accept?” Jon asks.

“I can’t show the application because confidentiality,” Brynden shakes his head, “but I’ll be damned if he didn’t mean every single word he wrote under _why do you want to join_. And — I couldn’t say no.”

Jon nods, figuring it’s a good enough answer.

They’ll see.

——

Jaime Lannister shows up a week later or so with a single duffel bag — not looking at all like someone who comes from money. He also looks like someone who needs to sleep for a good six months, he thanks Brynden _very_ seriously with none of the sarcasm he used to be famous for when he was interviewed in during those crappy afternoon shows where he went to do PR for his father’s company, asks them if he can get some three days before settling in and locks himself in the room they give him for that long.

When he gets out of it, he’s dressed in old jeans and worn-out t-shirts all the time, he’s only too glad to help out with the PR department — yes, they do have one — and if you ask Jon, no one has the right to look this miserable when they’re barely twenty-one, but still, he pulls his weight and whenever his father tries to tell the press he was brainwashed into joining a cult _he_ handles it, so everyone else leaves him alone to it.

No one quite learns what’s happened with him until some tabloid digs in deeper than the others and a couple of months after he shows up, he has to drive to the nearest town to pick up a copy of the infamous magazine, sporting a headline about how apparently the man was in an incestuous relationship with his sister that ended before she married Robert Baratheon, another tycoon on the same level as her father. Jon flips through the pages — there’s an interview with Cersei where she says that _he_ initiated it and it had been going on for a while, and that she was happy to finally be out of it and that her brother was off with likewise perverts in a likewise heathen country.

Jon thinks about Jaime’s face when he showed up and at Brynden’s when he said, _I’ll be damned if he didn’t mean every single word_.

He drives back to Riverrun.

“How much of this is bullshit?” He asks Jaime as he hands over the magazine.

Jaime looks at it, smiles sadly and says, “Most of it.”

“As in?”

“It’s true that we were fucking,” he says, his voice breaking, “but _I_ didn’t initiate it at all.”

——

“That application said he needed to get away from that mess of a toxic relationship, didn’t it?” Jon asks Brynden later, as they eat a light dinner.

Brynden nods, looking troubled. “He was very upfront about it. Then he also said that he’d have never considered asking someone else, but he remembered that interview I gave to the Guardian. Where I said I put this place up because my brother couldn’t deal with, well, me being into guys, and that I also welcomed to join anyone who felt like they couldn’t deal with their family’s disapproval, and he thought I’d understand. What was I going to tell him, to fuck off?”

Jon nods — he couldn’t have either. Not when he spent years wondering, _how would your father feel if he knew?_

“So what are you doing about it now?”

“Nothing,” Brynden says. “People thought we were some kind of incestuous coven way before he showed up. Well, one of the first articles said that if the government let us thrive, we’d start allowing incest, bestiality and a few other things that don’t include consensual sex in between adults of whichever gender. They’ll forget it soon enough, especially if he doesn’t go back.”

“Will he?” Jon asks.

“Hell, no,” Brynden says, shaking his head. “Still, he could be less miserable.”

Jon can’t help agreeing, but what he could even do about it?

——

There’s really nothing _he_ can do, true.

Still, he thinks as he remembers what Jaime told him when he asked, he really did sound heartbroken that the person he thought loved him no matter what not only lied to him about them being exclusive but broke things off without even blinking, and the fact that Jaime candidly admitted that can’t remember a moment when they _weren’t_ being _together_ in some way or the other was more than mildly worrying and Jon is going to try to convince him to talk to the one psychologist they have here, but it doesn’t seem like he’s looking for different partners.

He asks him one day. Jaime gives him another sad smile. “Flattered that you’d ask,” he smirks, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “But I don’t think many people are lining up here. Come on, they _know_. And as much as people around here might believe me about how it really was, no one wants to be with someone who fucked his twin sister. I made peace with it.”

Jon can see that.

Still, he hates how sad he looks all the time, and how he looks wistfully at all the people around him holding hands or kissing openly under the clouded sky, because it reminds him of how _he_ would look at Rhaegar all the damned time.

Huh.

And _what if_?

——

“I was thinking,” Jon says the next evening.

“Do you want to invite Lannister for a round or two?”

“… How the _hell_ did you guess it?”

Brynden snorts, moves closer to him as he grabs the dishes Jon’s washing. “You’re not that hard to read, and you’ve been trying to get him to loosen up for two weeks, and it’s not worked yet. Admittedly, he’s _not_ hard on the eyes,” he says. “I’d say why the hell not.”

“Well then,” Jon grins back, “ _maybe_ we should do that tomorrow.”

“ _Indeed_ ,” Brynden says, grabbing the back of his neck and kissing him before they stumble into the bedroom.

They don’t wash the dishes.

——

“Are you two _serious_?” Jaime asks, his green eyes glinting in the moonlight.

(Jon really, _really_ likes that you can see the stars here. In London, you can’t.)

“Why not?” Brynden asks. “I’ve known since you applied and you’ve done all right, and you’re certainly not the kind of guy I’d kick out of my bed. And it was _his_ idea.”

Jaime’s throat works up and down as he stares at the two of them.

Then.

“I’ve never been with anyone but her,” he whispers, as if he was confessing himself, not quite looking at them but rather at his hands. “I don’t know how good I might be.”

“I didn’t ask him if he’d be fine with you _joining_ for a couple rounds _just as long as you were good in bed_.”

“What he said,” Brynden echoes. “But I mean, if you don’t want to, you can say no. No one’s forcing anyone around here.”

“That’s not it,” Jaime says. “I just — you don’t care if I’m… not good?”

“It’s _sex_ ,” Brynden shrugs, “not quantum physics. You’ll figure it out.”

“It’s just,” Jaime says, still not quite looking at them. “With her, I mean, it never went anywhere if she didn’t like it, and I —”

Jon feels like blanching, if what he understood is right.

“You know what,” he says, “I think that the point here should be whether _you_ like it, not whether _we_ do.”

“What he said,” Brynden echoes.

Jaime stares at them for a moment before his mouth curls up in a tentative smile.

“All — all right then,” he says. “So, where’s the room?”

Huh. He _did_ sound slightly more cocky, now.

Jon decides that he’s _not_ going to think about what he just implied before and they’ll just see where it goes.

After all, it’s indeed _not_ quantum physics.

——

“ _Fuck_ ,” Jaime about screams the moment Jon thrusts inside him _fully_ , and Jon won’t be surprised if his voice is hoarse tomorrow — given how much he screamed that exact same word, very enthusiastically, when Brynden was sucking him off some fifteen minutes ago, Jon can bet on it. His hands are latching to Jon’s shoulders as his ankles hook around Jon’s knees, and the green of his eyes looks darker now, his pupils blown as Jon fucks into him very, very slowly and Brynden jerks him off at the same speed from behind, his finger grasping at the head of his dick so that he doesn’t come _too_ soon.

(It didn’t take him long to do it before, and he had looked fairly embarrassed at how little it had taken, but Jon had just laughed and told him that if it had been a long time it was normal, and anyway, they weren’t aiming to do it just once, right?

_As if I’d want to be done quickly if I had such a good-looking guy in my bed_ , Brynden had said, and Jon had noticed how Jaime’s cheeks had gone scarlet red at that, but the _good_ kind of.)

“See,” Jon says, one of his hands grasping at Jaime’s hips while the other is around Brynden’s shoulder for leverage, “I think this is going _somewhere_ regardless — of how _good in bed_ you might or might not have been, isn’t it?”

“I think it is,” Brynden replies, smirking over Jaime’s shoulder as he jerks him off again, and again.

Jon moves back and thrusts into him another time, feeling the way Jaime’s hips are arching upwards, looking for contact. He moans again, something like _please_ and _more_ and _again_.

“How polite,” Jon says, reaching for his hair, tugging on it just slightly before Brynden’s hand moves along his own and takes its place and Jon can move to Jaime’s face. “Sure thing.” He moves back, fucks into him once more, and once more, his thumb running over Jaime’s lower lip — Jaime’s lips part as he sucks it in, his tongue running over Jon’s fingertip, and he moans around it when Jon also slips index and middle alongside it. He takes them away after another couple of thrusts, leaning down and meeting kiss-swollen lips — Jaime’s chin _might_ be covered in beard burn at this point, but from the way he’s kissing him back, he thinks he doesn’t mind it whatsoever.

“You know,” Brynden says, sitting up slightly straighter so he can meet Jon’s mouth over Jaime’s shoulder, kissing him, “ _maybe_ I should go for it. I mean, I think he’s earned it, hasn’t he?”

Jaime about writhes in between them.

“Hm,” Jon answers, his hand cupping Jaime’s cheek again, feeling exactly _how much_ he’s arching into his palm, “why not. I mean, the night is young and it could be your turn later. If he’s up for it, of course?”

Jaime lets out a groan that could only mean that he’s entirely on board, but then —

“I — yes, _please_ , of course I am —”

“Why, then I think I want my turn,” Brynden grins. “Should I?”

“Yeah, _yeah_ , I really think so,” Jon says, and then Brynden finally moves his hand forward, letting Jaime’s aching hard dick be and moving it to his mouth, his come-stained fingers touching Jaime’s lips, and as he parts his mouth for them without blinking Jon goes back and gives a last thrust, _deep_ , and at _that_ he feels Jaime arch up with a strangled moan and come against his stomach, harder than he had before, and _that_ sets him off — he comes as well a moment later, buried inside Jaime, and since they used plenty of lube before it feels slick and smooth and warm, and he keeps his hands on Jaime’s face and his hip as the both of them let go and the bed creaks once, twice, but it doesn’t really crash or anything.

Good, Jon decides, and then he only worries about how _good_ this feels and at how Jaime’s blown pupils are looking up into his as if he’s thinking that this is _so much better than he ever thought it could be_.

As if he _needed to have experience_. Jon snorts and then doesn’t think anymore.

——

“So,” Brynden says when Jon’s caught his breath — Jaime _sort_ of has, but he’s lying in between them with his eyes closed and the face of someone who _really_ isn’t regretting their life choices, “is this _going somewhere_?”

“More than,” Jaime breathes, opening his eyes and looking up at the both of them like he wants _more_. Given that he’s lying on the wet spot on the bed and there’s both lube and come along his legs, Jon has an idea that he’s still spread open, of course he’d be —

“Then can I have the pleasure? I can’t leave all the fun to _him_ ,” he says, grinning in Jon’s direction.

“ _Fuck_ , anytime,” Jaime says, spreading his legs — he breathes in, and now he looks like he’s stopped feeling awed at how he _didn’t_ need to actually make sure they were done before worrying about his own enjoyment of the current situation _and_ like he’s about to enjoy the shit out of the rest of the evening. “It really wasn’t fucking physics, I guess.”

Brynden smirks as he moves into Jon’s former position and slides a couple of fingers inside Jaime’s ass, and Jon’s throat goes dry at the sight, but then again —

_Well_ , he thinks as Jaime lets out another strangled moan while Brynden’s fingers fuck into him slowly and he lies on the side, his hand going to Jaime’s spent cock and starting to stroke it all over again — it took barely five minutes to make him hard again before, can’t be too long now —, no one said that they can’t invite him for another couple rounds _again_ , right?

And as he glances at Brynden’s eyes before going back to his task, he has the feeling that he absolutely agrees.


	6. bran/shireen; canon setting, post-series

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAND have the canon setting one. HOPEFULLY THIS MAKES SOME SENSE IDEK also book characterizations sorry but show!bran is 100% beyond my capabilities and it'd take me 10k of making sense of his current characterization before actually getting to this point.

Thank the gods there was no bedding.

Not that Shireen had thought there _would_ , but she’d have hated it in any circumstance and in _this_ one? It would have been awful for the both of them. Then again, she shouldn’t even have worried about it — she’s been around the Starks long enough to know that no one amongst them would agree with that kind of humiliation, and her father most likely insisted, too.

Instead, when some drunken northern lord clamors for the wedding, she does what Sansa instructed her to, and smiles as graciously as possible as she says that she’ll be glad to go to the bedchamber herself and so will her lord husband.

No one is even sure of the title, admittedly, but Bran assured her that one was fine enough and honestly, he barely even cared. Shireen has stood, curtsied, and wheeled him out of the dining hall, and now that she stopped outside their bedchamber’s door (moved to the lower floor, at least for tonight), she hears him laugh weakly.

“My lord?” She asks. “Is something amiss?”

“Oh, all the contrary,” he replies, reaching out to open the door. “I was just thinking about some of the faces sitting in front of us.” He’s silent as she wheels him inside.”

“I — admittedly, I tried to not pay attention,” she admits. “I mean no disrespect, of —”

“My lady, _please_ ,” he smiles, tiredly but sincere, “it was no disrespect and if it was for me I would have skipped on the feast. Alas, I could not. I think some of them _did_ want the bedding, though.”

“I wish you were wrong,” she sighs. But she _did_ hear some people whispering, _couldn’t they find a better match since he’s a cripple and she’s hideous_. She hadn’t said anything because it’s nothing new, but _still._ “Could they even speak that way?”

“Well, _no_ ,” Bran admits, “but a lot of them didn’t relish that they have to settle with _me_ as a regent and my brother’s children as my heirs if it turns out I can’t have any of my own.”

He doesn’t say, _even when they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me during the Long Night_ , but from what Shireen has seen, most people around here like to pretend Bran’s involvement in it never happened, the ones who know the extent of it. She watches him take off his cloak and shirt and put on the clothing that were left on the bed for him. She clears his throat.

“Do you need me to help with —”

“No need to concern yourself with it,” he smiles, slightly. “I learned. But if I do need help, I will ask. Please do attend to your own needs, first.”

She turns towards the mirror and undoes her braid, then changes her Stark cloak and black and gold dress for the heavy nightgown that was also waiting for her on the bed, her bare fingertips curling against the heavy fur carpet on the ground as she does.

Then she turns towards the bed and sees that Bran has hoisted himself up on it and under the covers — he’s wearing a heavy tunic and his clothing is pooled up on the ground, but she figures they will care about it in the morning. She joins him a moment later, not quite knowing what to do but figuring that they aren’t really… following protocol here, are they?

“Well,” Bran says, “ _that_ went well.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I was hoping it _wouldn’t_ end up with me unceremoniously crashing on the ground,” he smiles slightly. “And don’t say you could have done it. I mean, I suppose, but — I want to try and do as much as I can on my own.”

“I understand,” she says, and she _does_ , really. She can only imagine how it has to be for him, when only her scarred face was enough to make her feel inadequate. And knowing what he can do, she figures it can only be a lot, lot worse. “Just, feel free to ask if there is the need.”

He nods, and then he closes his mouth and says nothing, and she looks into his large, blue eyes, thinking that they look _so much older_ than his six and ten years.

Then again, haven’t people told _her_ the same thing over and over again?

“I —” He starts. “I’m just — I imagine most maidens expect… different things of their wedding night.”

She can feel blood rushing to her cheeks. “Oh, there’s no — I mean, I barely even imagined that I would get a wedding night in the first place. Gods, that sounded… I apologize, I didn’t mean —”

“Please.” He raises a hand, waving it towards the window. “What do you think they told _me_ when I woke up after, well, my fall?” He shakes his head. “And honestly, your… reason to not get one is fairly less relevant than _mine_ should be.” He smiles slightly, but she can see that he’s nervous from the way his fingers are grasping at the sheet.

“Still. I was told that my father’s name was the only reason I ever would, well, be married in the first place to someone who wasn’t… looking for titles, I imagine.”

For a moment he seems about to say something, then he shakes his head again. “My lady, Westeros is hardly… the place for bastards, cripples and broken things, as Lord Tyrion likes to say. Still, there’s a _bastard_ on the Iron Throne these days. Maybe it’s time that us cripples and broken things have our turn. Which I suppose includes very awkward wedding nights.”

She laughs — she _has_ to. It was funny, and it was also slightly true, and as she moves on to her side, she thinks that maybe the nerves she’s had for the entire last week have been unfounded. “And what if I didn’t want it to be awkward but I’m afraid no one’s quite explained me how to avoid it?” Certainly not her father, bless him — he tried, but he _always_ was awkward with her mother, too, _outside_ the bedroom. Shireen has the feeling that he couldn’t have done more than tell her to not be too nervous and that Bran Stark was his father’s _and_ mother’s son and a worthy match. Lord Davos _did_ try, too, but it’s also obvious that he’s only had that conversation with his very, very _male_ children, not with girls.

“If it consoles you,” Bran smirks, “both Jon and Sansa tried to explain _that_ to me and it didn’t work out too well, either.”

“… Really? But —”

“I _know_. I mean. I _don’t particularly_ want to, but as you know, there was a point where — well. I could — see into the past at will. I couldn’t really control it. I might have seen — more than I wished for and talking to them about it was just too much.” His cheeks have gone almost as red as his hair now. “Anyway, _knowing_ doesn’t make it any less awkward.”

Shireen nods, her hand tentatively reaching out and grasping his. They met a fair amount of times before the marriage, but it was always with other people around them, at most they discussed a few history books in the library once, and they never quite did anything like _this_ , but — it can’t be wrong, right? He turns it against hers, their fingers tangling together. She can hear his direwolf growling softly outside the door, and then his Tully blue eyes go slightly wider.

“What if,” he says slowly, “I _think_ I have an idea to, well, make it less awkward?”

“I would be glad to hear it.”

“I don’t think telling you about it might work. It’s just that — hm.” He breathes in. “All right. This probably will not work and I don’t think I _should_ be doing it, but in all honesty, I’m beyond caring. They bestowed this on _me_ , they will have to deal with it.”

“ _They_ …?” She asks.

“It’s a long story,” he says, still sounding way older than his years. “I will tell you, one day. Could you close your eyes?”

She does, lying back against the bed, and noticing that a raven just landed on the windowsill. His hand grasps hers, tighter, and then she feels _something_.

 

 

She doesn’t know how to describe it — it’s like a pull, maybe, but _not exactly_ , and then her eyes open but —

It’s not _her_ eyes. The colors are brighter and sharper and Winterfell is _under_ her, and she can see it getting smaller in the distance as she flies, no, wait, _she’s_ not flying but it feels like she is, and then she hears Bran’s voice saying _we’re doing that, they said I could never walk but that I could do this_ , and then she realizes that they’re somehow _inside that raven_ as it glides quickly over a tree covered in snow and then flies back up towards the sky, faster and faster and faster — the cold hair is ruffling her hair and her cheeks feel icy and somehow she feels like Bran is _right next to her_ even if he’s technically _not_ and then the raven looks down and she watches Winterfell covered in blinding white snow, and she thinks, _it’s so beautiful —_

 

 

Then she sits up on the bed, breathing in deeply, turning towards Bran, whose cheeks are covered in sweat and whose hair isn’t carefully combed anymore.

“That was —” She says. “Oh gods, that was —”

“The price I had to pay for this,” he finishes, nodding towards his legs. “Well, it’s not all I can do, but still. I was hoping I could show you,” he says, his voice going lower. “It’s just — we wouldn’t have won against the Others without it, and I don’t regret it, and I know it _had_ to happen. Still. Not sharing it with anyone then makes you… very awkward when it’s… anyone else but your siblings, you know.”

She nods, and wants to tell him that she gets it, that she understands how he can’t _talk_ about it, and she wants to thank him for having brought her along even if he _shouldn’t_ have, but she’s really… well, she always was a better reader than talker, wasn’t she?

So she does what fair maidens did in all those books her mother didn’t want her to read — she takes a breath, doesn’t leave his hand and turns on her side, and — she had never thought she’d do it first with whoever she ended up wedding, but apparently she _is_ , and so she moves forward and closes the distance between them.

He has soft lips, she thinks, and his free hand is gentle as it cups her ruined cheek, and it’s not a _long_ kiss, but it’s — good. She hadn’t even thought about how kissing people would feel like because she never thought anyone would care to do it with her, but then he moves forward and he’s kissing her again, less tentatively, and as he grabs on to her hand tighter, she thinks… that no, this really isn’t awkward anymore. And even if they stop here tonight, it’s going to be fine. They have all the time in the world, after all, don’t they?

 

 

End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .... phew. HMMM IT'S NOT MIDNIGHT IN THE WORLD SOMEWHERE so it's still the 5th HAPPY BIRTHDAY AGAIN I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS AND IS2G THE ONE YOU *KNEW* ABOUT IS COMING SOON <333


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